Designer: Alban Viard (Clinic, Small City, Tramways)

Artist: Ian O’Toole (Escape Plan, The Gallerist, Lisboa, Nemo’s War, On Mars, Pipeline, Railways of Portugal, Stockpile, Vinhos Deluxe)

Publisher: AVStudioGames (Card City XL, Small City, Tramways)

Genre/Mechanisms: economic, pick up & deliver, resource management, simulation, tile placement, worker placement

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Clinic: Deluxe Edition is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 7x the initial funding goal.

Player Count: 1-4

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: heavy

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About: This new version of the heavy hospital simulator Clinic features stunning new box art, rewritten & revised rules (including one set for beginners and another for experts), incredible new art and design work from Ian O’Toole, and an expansion that collects all previous Clinic mini-expansions and additional content.

How It Works:  Games take place over 6 rounds, featuring 3 phases each: Actions, Business, and Administration. In the Actions Phase, players simultaneously choose sets of actions three times per round. These include Building, Hiring, and Admitting Patients. Players have 2 tokens for each action, so in a given round they can perform each action once, or one action once and one action twice (but not one action 3 times). In the Business Phase, players evaluate Patient Care and Income, Expenses, and Popularity. Finally, the Administration Phase is a bookkeeping phase where players make some adjustments to their player boards, the main board is restocked with certain items, turn orders resets, and the round marker advances. Final scoring involves gaining points for various types of employees, treatment rooms, and buildings, while losing points for various types of patients still under the player’s care as well as time spent over the course of the game.

Comparisons: The easiest comparison, because of the Ian O’Toole art and design work, are his collaborations with Vital Lacerda: Escape Plan, The Gallerist, Lisboa, On Mars, and Vinhos Deluxe. Chunky Euros, all.

What Should I Pledge?:
$59 The Doctor: the new Clinic: Deluxe Edition, including custom components and deluxe features, laser cut pieces, and all stretch goals.
$99 The CEO: the Doctor Pledge plus The Extension expansion, which collects the previous Clinic expansions and mini-expansions (all 12 of them).
$124 The Mayor: the CEO Pledge, plus a copy of Alban Viard’s Card City XL.
$124 The Thinker: the CEO Pledge, plus a copy of Alban Viard’s Tramways Engineer’s Workbook.
$148 The Stationmaster: the CEO Pledge, plus a copy of Alban Viard’s Tramways.
$198 The Geek: the CEO Pledge, plus a copies of Alban Viard’s Card City XL, Tramways, and the Tramways Engineer’s Workbook.

Add-Ons:
None.

KS Exclusives:
None. Although as Alban Viard notes, the first print run of Clinic was a quick sell-out. They’re not planning on producing lots of additional copies, and it’s possible there won’t be any going to retail at all. If there are, MSRP will be set at $69. Since Viard has made no statement about the Extension expansion, and it obviously won’t be included with the base game, it’s even less likely you’ll be able to find that part of the game at retail.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $99 plus $10 in shipping, for a total of $109. Unless you also want Card City XL, Tramways, and the Tramways Engineer’s Workbook, in which case you’re looking at $198 plus $35 in shipping for a total of $233.

Clinic Deluxe Edition completes its Kickstarter on Friday, May 31st and tentatively ships in December 2019.